Fort Brooke

Forts

Forts have a special meaning to me. After all, as a kid, my friends and I built forts from dirt clods. We raised a handkerchief flag on a broom stick in each new fort, named them and defended them against Indian attacks as well as wild animals. I remember imagining John Wayne riding up to our fort's gate with a band of Apache warriors in hot pursuit while we waited for the perfect moment to shoot our cap guns. Now that I am grown up and wiser, I would cheer for the Apache instead of the Blue-Coats.

Tampa Has a Fort

Tampa, like many Florida cities, has history buried under its grid of concrete and pavement called downtown. But some of its history was buried on purpose by modern progress. The place I am thinking of is a parking garage in downtown Tampa that was both an ancient Native American village as well as an American fort. What fort? What Native American village?

First Were Native Americans

Native Americans first recognized the location as prime real estate and built a temple mound there during the Paleo-Indian period. According to Indian Mounds You Can Visit, by I. Mac Perry. A plaque in the garage attests to this fact when it states that "Evidence of occupation by Indian groups spanning the period of 8000 B.C. - A.D. 1924 was recovered during the excavation."

I was relieved to learn that historians had recovered numerous priceless artifacts from the location before it became entombed in 1980. If you ever cross from downtown Tampa to Davis Island, you have passed through Fort Brooke. Later, without any disregard to pre-Colombian history, an army fort was constructed on the same location in perhaps 1824 - lasting until approximately 1862.

Fort Brooke

The place is called Fort Brooke and the only exploration you can do is through the pages of a book or by imagining what was there while parked on one of the hundreds of white-striped parking spaces. It takes no special map skill to locate the place - merely read the sign affixed above the parking garage and you can plainly see it is Ft. Brooke.

The fort was named after Colonel George Mercer Brooke, who in 1824 set up a military post, under the power granted by the Treaty of Moultrie Creek, to distribute supplies to the Indians. In actuality, it was used to suppress the Native Americans. During the Civil War, Fort Brooke was occupied by Confederate troops. In 1862, two Union gunboats shelled the city, including Fort Brooke and in the same year, the fort was dismantled.

Although the fort today is merely an ugly parking garage, we can thank some collectors who sifted the grounds for artifacts - after the archeologists finished their recovery efforts - before the site was covered up by bulldozers, rusted iron rebar and gray concrete. One such dealer-collector, Terry Sellari, owner of Florida River Fossils, provided me with some irreplaceable artifacts from Fort Brooke - two musket balls and a rare larger ball, perhaps a mortar round.

Each time I have to drive downtown, I actually look forward to passing by the fort and find myself daydreaming about the men stationed there and the earlier aborigines who fished and hunted the nearby area.

I wonder what those ancients would think if they saw what we, modern man, have done to the landmarks they constructed. Perhaps it is not the Alamo, but nevertheless, it is a bit of Tampa's history.

- submitted by Bill Hoefer